Petraeus affair scandal widens to include Gen. John Allen and more [AM Briefing]

“The FBI probe into the sex scandal that prompted CIA Director David Petraeus to resign has expanded to ensnare Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, the Pentagon announced early Tuesday. According to a senior U.S. defense official, the FBI has uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of documents — most of them e-mails — that contain “potentially inappropriate” communication between Allen and Jill Kelley, the 37-year-old Tampa woman whose report of harassment by a person who turned out to be Petraeus’s mistress ultimately led to Petraeus’s downfall.” (Washington Post)

Petraeus ghostwriter ‘clueless’ to affair: “I never anticipated the extramarital affair between David H. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, the woman I’d worked with for 16 months on a book about Petraeus’s year commanding the war in Afghanistan. On rare occasions, her good looks and close access would prompt a colleague to raise an eyebrow about their relationship, but I never took it seriously.” (Washington Post)

Petraeus hoped affair would stay secret and he could keep his job as CIA director: “FBI agents searched the home of the woman at the center of the scandal involving former CIA director David H. Petraeus on Monday evening, carrying away boxes and bags of material and taking photographs inside her home in Charlotte.” (Washington Post)

How the fiscal crisis puts national security at risk: “I am not an economist or a budget analyst, so I don’t presume to know exactly what a “grand bargain” should look like. It seems pretty obvious that a compromise will require both tax reform, including if necessary some tax increases, and entitlement reform, since those programs are the biggest driver of the fiscal crisis. What I do know, as a national security analyst, is that our continuing failure to address the crisis in a way that makes possible a return to stable economic growth has become a serious foreign policy problem,” writes Brookings’ Robert Kagan. (Washington Post)

The fiscal delusion: “Much of the current energy around establishing sound fiscal conditions is focused on plans that theoretically would both contribute revenue to deficit reduction and significantly reduce individual income tax rates. Though hugely appealing, that’s a tall order,” writes CFR co-chairman Robert E Rubin. (New York Times)

AEI’s Marc Thiessen: “How on earth did Barack Obama, the community organizer, harness the power of data in the 2012 election like a Bain Capital numbers-cruncher, while Mitt Romney’s data-mining effort crashed and burned like, well, Solyndra? While Romney was relying on false signs of Republican “enthusiasm” and “momentum,” Obama was playing a game of political “Moneyball” — using an analytical, metrics-based approach to assemble a winning campaign, the way Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s used rigorous statistical analysis to assemble a winning baseball team.” (Washington Post)

Heritage President Ed Feulner lays out three challenges for Obama’s second term. (Washington Times)

Room for Debate asks: The repercussions of Greece leaving the euro zone have been widely debated. But what if a powerful creditor country like Germany left instead? (New York Times)

“With conservatives still smarting from Mitt Romney’s 126-vote drubbing in the Electoral College, now is the hour for “rethinking” on the Right. I’m no Nate Silver, but I’ll hazard a prediction on one result of the ongoing ideological introspection: The conservative movement is finally going to rediscover a healthy skepticism toward presidential power,” writes Cato’s Gene Healy. (Washington Examiner)